Founding Team

Dr. Shlomit Yehudai-Reshef, PhD, is currently the Director of the Clinical Research Institute at Rambam (CRIR). She completed her PhD in biology at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (Haifa, Israel), and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at Cornell University in New York, USA.

In 2012, Dr. Yehudai-Reshef became a part of the Hematology Research Center at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, Israel. There, she established the Leukemia Research Laboratory, which is affiliated with the CRIR.

 

Since 2016, Dr. Yehudai-Reshef has been a member of the CRIR, and in 2018, she assumed the role of CRIR Director. She is deeply committed to fostering collaboration between physicians and scientists, and she actively promotes translational research. Driven by her vision, she aims to establish a national translational research ecosystem led by healthcare researchers. Furthermore, she actively encourages global collaborations and strives for scientific excellence within the CRIR.

 

Alongside her research and leadership responsibilities, Dr. Yehudai-Reshef holds the position of Senior Lecturer at the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion in Haifa, Israel. She recognizes the importance of promoting educational programs and nurturing the next generation of researchers.

 

In 2015, Dr. Yehudai-Reshef founded "Nevia Bio (formerly Gina Life)," a FemTech company dedicated to developing a platform for early diagnosis of various diseases in women. Currently, she serves as the Chief Scientist and a board member of the company.

 

Dr. Yehudai-Reshef's research approach is characterized by its multidisciplinary nature, drawing from her diverse expertise, skills, and knowledge. This combination contributes to her innovative and creative research endeavors, as she continues to make significant contributions in her field.

Dr. Zafir-Lavie completed her PhD cum laude in 2010 at the Technion – the Israel Institute of Technology, in antibody engineering and cancer immunology. Upon completing her Ph.D., Dr. Zafir-Lavie worked at Bio-Rad as a project leader in the Protein Technologies Unit.

 

Next, Dr. Zafir-Lavie joined Aevi Genomic Medicine as a team leader for the development of the antibody gene-therapy platform and later as Israel R&D Site Head. Later, she relocated to Philadelphia, PA USA to work as a Senior Scientist in the translational medicine group at Aevi Genomic Medicine, collaborating with the Center of Applied Genomics at CHOP. In her work in the US, Dr. Zafir-Lavie developed innovative diagnostic assays and cutting-edge therapeutics for auto-immune diseases.

 

Upon returning from the USA, Dr. Zafir-Lavie worked for Merck group as a senior scientist where she was responsible for transferring innovative projects from the academy to the industry towards IND.

 

In 2020 Inbal joined Nevia bio (formerly Gina-Life) as CEO and co-founder. Inbal leads Nevia bio to develop a Machine-Learning platform for early detection of ovarian cancer and additional women’s health diseases.

 

Inbal is an Advisory Board member at the Arizona State University program for Clinical Research Management and Regulatory Science, and a member of the 8400-health network.

 

Throughout her career, Dr. Zafir-Lavie has sought to use innovative and out-of-the-box thinking to promote translational work, which will prolong patients’ lives. Dr. Zafir-Lavie is keen to promote technologies for improving women’s health.

Roni Michaely is an Endowed Chair Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurialship at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). Professor Michaely is also a research member at the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). Before that he spent a significant portion of his career as The Rudd Family professor of Finance at Cornell University and Cornell Tech.

 

Professor Michaely is the founding Managing Director of the HKU Tel-Aviv Innovation Hub. The hub goal is to educate and bring the Israeli Entrepreneurialship and Innovation know-how to executives and students around the world with a particular emphasis on Hong Kong, China and South-East Asia. It also serves as one of the business focal point connecting startups and large corporations in that region. 

 

Professor Michaely is a co-founder of two startups, Nevia Bio (formally Gina life) and VirtuSwap. He is also on the board of a fintech startup, Tipranks and on the advisory boards of several startups. He was a director of the Israeli Securities Authority (ISA) from 1998 to 2003.

 

His teaching includes Corporate Finance and Entrepreneurial Finance for MBAs, executive MBAs, DBA and PhD students. Professor Michaely’s research interests are in the areas of empirical Corporate Finance and capital markets. His research addresses how informational and agency frictions in capital markets affect managers, investors (such as funds), and information providers (such as analysts and bloggers) decisions, output, and the effect on capital market efficiency. In recent years he devotes considerable efforts to study issues related to ESG, such as how corporations and capital market can impact sustainability. His work also covers the topics of Corporate Governance, Entrepreneurial Finance, and FinTech. Professor Michaely has more than 75 academic publications, appearing in journals such as the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Finance, JFQA, and Management Science. He was recently recognized as one of the most prolific researchers in finance with over 30,000 citations.